m' boy. They all would. Well, maybe you can be, some
day. Maybe you can be.... Some day."

"I mean now. Right away. Heard you were going t' start a school. Want
to join."

"Hm, hm," sighed Dr. Bagby, tapping his teeth, jingling his heavy
gold watch-chain, brushing a trail of cigar-ashes from a lapel, then
staring abstractedly at Carl, who was turning his hat swiftly round
and round, so flushed of cheek, so excited of eye, that he seemed
twenty instead of twenty-four. "Yes, yes, so you'd like to join. Tst.
But that would cost you five hundred dollars, you know."

"Right!"

"Well, you go talk to Munseer about it; Munseer Carmeau. He is a very
good aviator. He is a licensed aviator. He knows Henry Farman. He
studied under Bleriot. He is the boss here. I'm just the poor old
fellow that stands around. Sometimes Munseer takes me up for a little
ride in our machine; sometimes he takes me up; but he is the boss. He
is the boss, my friend; you'll have to see him." And Dr. Bagby walked
away, apparently much discouraged about life.

Carl was not discouraged about life. He swore that now he would be an
aviator even if he had to go to Dayton or Hammondsport or France.

He returned to Oakland. He sold his share in the garage for $1,150.

Before the end of January he was enrolled as a student in the Bagby
School of Aviation and Monoplane Building.

On an impulse he wrote of his wondrous happiness to Gertie Cowles, but
he tore up the letter. Then proudly he wrote to his father that the
lost boy had found himself. For the first time in all his desultory
writing of home-letters he did not feel impelled to defend himself.

CHAPTER XVIII

Crude were the surroundings where Carmeau turned out some of the best
monoplane pilots America will ever see. There were two rude shed-hangars in
which they kept the three imported Bleriots--a single-seat racer of the
latest type, a Bleriot XII. passenger-carrying machine with the seat under
the plane, and "P'tite Marie," the school machine, which they usually kept
throttled down to four hundred or five hundred, but in which Carmeau made
such spirited flights as the one Carl had first witnessed. Back of the
hangars was the workshop, which had little architecture, but much
machinery. Here the pupils were building two Bleriot-type machines, and
trying to build an eight-cylinder V motor. All these things had Bagby given
for the good of the game, expecting no profit in return. He was one o